Plant Health Australia (PHA) continues to strengthen both its corporate technology environment and the national digital systems PHA manages, including AUSPestCheck®, the Australian Plant Pest Database (APPD), and the Plant and Disease Image Library (PaDIL), through a coordinated ICT Roadmap aligned with the Australian Cyber Security Centre’s Essential Eight framework.

The road map supports our ongoing commitment to secure, reliabile systems that underpin business continuity and service delivery.

Developed in collaboration with PHA’s ICT partners, the roadmap outlines a series of initiatives to strengthen our technology environment, enhance organisational resilience, and better safeguarding information and services.

Recent activities have focused on improving device and application security, reinforcing identity and access management controls, and implementing additional safeguards to reduce cyber risk. Collectively, these measures ensure our corporate and national digital systems remain secure, up to date, and resilient against an increasingly complex cyber threat landscape.

Enhancing protection and resilience

Improvements introduced under the roadmap aim to reduce common attack pathways and strengthen protections across key business applications and national digital systems. Combined with enhanced security controls, these initiatives contribute to a more resilient and secure digital environment.

Enhancements to backup and recovery capabilities ensure important organisational and national system data is protected and can be restored when needed, reducing the impact of potential disruptions and supporting operational continuity.

A roadmap for continuous improvement

The ICT roadmap supports ongoing improvement in cyber security maturity through collaboration between the IT Service Management team and our ICT partners. These efforts are designed to deliver practical, sustainable improvements that align with organisational needs while supporting staff and protecting information assets across both corporate and national digital systems.

As this work continues, PHA will continue to prioritise security, reliability and usability across its corporate and national digital systems.